


My Land's Only Borders Lie Around My Heart

by writingmonsters



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, I Don't Even Know, I Just Wanted This to Be Out of My Drafts Folder, I just don't know, Just Napollya Being Sweet, M/M, Mature Rating Because It's Kinda Sexy, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 23:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10582002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/writingmonsters
Summary: “Nice digs, Peril,” Napoleon keeps his voice light, does his best not to think about Illya puttering about in this sad little flat by himself for the three months they’ve been on the mission while he brushes paint chips off his knees.The man in question prowls around him, half in shadow, inspecting with keen eyes. “It is sufficient.” And the he is close enough for Napoleon to catch the ghost of his aftershave, those long fingers ghosting over Napoleon’s lapels, his shirt-collar, the seams of his jacket ...Napoleon and Illya share a quiet moment together in a Parisian safe-house after a mission has kept them apart for three months.





	

It takes three months to track the smuggled artworks out of France, through half of Western Europe, and back to New York City where they were to be auctioned off.

Now they are back in Paris and a reunion is in order.

Napoleon watches through the blue-smoke haze of the Parisian club as Gaby waltzes in her slinky, low-backed dress, leaning in close to murmur against their mark’s attentive ear. Damn, but she is _gifted_. He swirls his glass of cognac as the mark nods, lips moving – unintelligible from this distance, obscured by the brassy cacophony of the live band – and then drifts away toward the wet bar as Gaby sashays her way off the dance floor.

She makes a roundabout circuit of the room and Napoleon shifts on the chaise when she winds up next to him, settling herself feather-light and languid on the plush cushions. The band strikes up another rousing, doo-wop shimmy and Gaby studies him from beneath her fluffed fringe. “This is exhausting,” she mutters, digging in her clutch. “The man is unbearably dull, Napoleon. Are you sure you can’t be the one to seduce him?”

He tosses back the rest of his drink with a wry smile. “Afraid not, Gaby dearest. Even my talents only go so far.”

“Too bad.” Gaby pouts and passes him a stick of Wrigley’s gum and busies herself with toeing off the strappy stiletto heels that have bitten red lines into her feet. “I will finish up here tonight.” She doesn’t look him in the eye, stares straight ahead and pastes on her biggest smile for the mark who skirts the edges of the dancefloor, drinks in hand. “Why don’t you pay a visit to our friend Elijah?”

The false passports and travel documents had been arranged their first week in Paris, Napoleon and Gaby playing at newly wedded art dealers and Illya loitering on street corners with his Kiev 4, a photographer by name of Elijah Konstantin. Napoleon had been the one to build the cover story for him, had rehearsed it with Illya over and over again on the flight.

“Where are you from?”

“The Ukraine.”

“What’s your name?”

“Elijah Konstantin.” Napoleon had kept the name as similar as he could to avoid any slip-ups. It was one of Illya’s greatest flaws as an agent – the man could never remember his own alias. At least Konstantin was close enough to Kuryakin that Illya still remembered to respond, and he has used the Anglicized version of his first name more than once when a conspicuously less Russian presence had been required.

“What brings you to Paris, Elijah?”

“I am photographer looking for inspiration in the birthplace of greatest Western art.”

“You’re dropping your articles again, Peril. You are _a_ photographer – now, repeat all that back to me again and try to sound like you mean it.”

“I am _a_ photographer whose has come to Paris to study the great artists. But I am naïve and will be easily convinced to take part in smuggling activities.” And Illya had pressed two big palms to the sides of his head, dragged fingers through his hair and sighed “this is not going to work, Cowboy. Is useless.”

Napoleon had thought the same. “Illya.” He had repeated, echoing Waverly’s clipped orders in the hotel room. “You want to send _Illya_ undercover? Our Illya? May I remind you that this same man was so conspicuous in Istanbul that we nearly had the scrub the entire mission because his cover was blown within a half hour of our arrival?”

And Illya had scowled at him across the abandoned chessboard, little worry-knots tightening between his eyebrows.

“Why not send me?” Napoleon had protested, scooping up the telephone as Illya unfolded. “Or Gaby, even? She’s certainly capable enough.”

Waverly’s sigh had been a crackle of static. “ _I understand your concerns, Agent Solo, but I am afraid there is no other choice. We are, after all, a fledgling organization – if I had a larger pool of agents to pull from, perhaps something could be arranged…”_

Whatever Waverly had said next was cut off as Napoleon jammed the receiver between his ear and shoulder, dancing away from Illya’s grabby hands with the Bakelite tucked up under his arm.

“Cowboy – _give me phone_.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to repeat that last bit” Napoleon had huffed, throwing up a hand so that his palm rested against Illya’s chest, a useless attempt to keep him at bay.

“ _You are not inspiring me with confidence, Agent Solo._ ” The hotel phone lines might have frozen over if Waverly’s voice had been any chillier. “ _Agent Kuryakin is already in a position to remain undercover in Paris and maintain his surveillance of our prospective art smugglers. You and Miss Teller, on the other hand, will proceed to New York City where we have reason to believe that several of the pieces will be up for auction. We need_ you _there for your connections with the art dealers and gallery houses._ ”

“Illya’s cover right now is flimsy at best,” Napoleon protested. “Believe me, I’ve done the starving artist expat shtick and it’s not going to work. I-”

Illya had punched him. Not hard enough to do any real damage – only a fist-sized bruise beneath his bicep – but enough to persuade Napoleon to drop the phone.

“ _Jesus Christ, Peril_!”

“Waverly” Illya crouched, gathering up the receiver to his ear “this is Agent Kuryakin.” And Napoleon had watched the knots grow deeper between his eyebrows, the press of his lips into a thin, grim line. “ _Da_ ,” Illya listened a moment longer. “Yes, it will be done.” A pause, and then “ _spasibo. Dobroy nochi_.” He’d hung up the receiver, set the Bakelite carefully back in its place on the nightstand.

And they had left him in Paris, in the miserable little tenement building with his false-bottomed suitcase stuffed with rolls of film and the Kiev 4 looking intolerably small in his scarred, long-fingered hands.

Now, Napoleon lays the slice of gum on his tongue, crumples the wrapper with its penciled address, and stuffs it into his pocket. “You’ll be all right on your own?”

Gaby arches one sleek, perfect eyebrow. “I think I have proven myself more than capable by now, Mister Davenport.” Her manicure gleams when she lifts a hand, waving their beaming mark over to the chaise. “I will be fine,” she says _sotto voce_ “go see Illya. Give him my love.”

“Of course.” He takes her little hand in his own, kisses her bare knuckles. “Best of luck to you, Fraulein.” Napoleon rises in a fluid motion, tugging the lapels of his jacket into place as he blends easily into the crush of the nightclub.

He ignores the little thrills of relief in his veins that urge him to _leave_ , to _hurry up and go already_ , and instead makes a slow circuit through the tangle of dancers and merry-makers. He makes it out the door, one string of pearls and three gold bracelets richer. Baubles, really – just a way to keep his hand in. But he’ll be damned if the delicate pink color of the pearls won’t look stunning against Gaby’s fresh tan.

The Parisian night is warm and humid, everything blue-black in the twilight and dotted with the orange haze of street lamps along the Seine. He whistles a bawdy French drinking song as he strolls, hands stuffed into his pockets, toward the 5th arrondissement. He double-checks the address scrawled on the inside of the gum wrapper. Illya will be holed up in the rundown safe house with its moldering wallpaper and drafty windows, frowning out at the river that shimmers with moonlight.

He doubles back twice, cutting through alleys and retracing his steps to be certain there is no one following him. The streets and shadows are deserted. Napoleon takes the fire escape up, feels it wobble and crumble into orange dust beneath his brogues. Everything is sticky-sweet with the smell of summer garbage and he wrinkles his nose, breathing through his mouth when he reaches the third floor landing, raps his knuckle against the cloudy window pane.

There is a moment where the only sound is the yowling of the ragged alley cats, and then the warped sill gives way with a squeak and a groan. “Cowboy?” Illya’s voice is hushed, pleasure-tinged in a way that he cannot quite manage to disguise. “There is nothing wrong with using the door, you know.” He steps back, though, making room for Napoleon to slide through the open window with feline grace.

The safe house is a shabby little affair. One glance and Napoleon has taken in the whole of it – the peeling whitewash, smell of mothballs and fifty years of dust, the decrepit couch with its sagging middle. The room is lit by a single naked lightbulb, and it is beneath this weak white sun that Illya has laid out all the tools of his trade. On the scarred kitchen table are bits of surveillance equipment – none of the faulty US tech – audio bugs, tracking devices, tape recorders and the boxy Kiev 4. The little snub-nose pistol that Illya keeps at his ankle is laid out beside the gear, stripped down and smelling of gun oil.

“Nice digs, Peril,” Napoleon keeps his voice light, does his best not to think about Illya puttering about in this sad little flat by himself for the three months they’ve been on the mission while he brushes paint chips off his knees.

The man in question prowls around him, half in shadow, inspecting with keen eyes. “It is sufficient.” And the he is close enough for Napoleon to catch the ghost of his aftershave, those long fingers ghosting over Napoleon’s lapels, his shirt-collar, the seams of his jacket – searching for bugs. After the catastrophe in Istanbul, they are careful about such things. Illya steps back, his eyes pale in the weak light. “You are clear. What are you doing here?”

Napoleon lets some of the ramrod stiffness melt from his spine, one dark eyebrow quirking upward. “You sure about that?” He smirks.

Illya’s long shadow shrugs and again Napoleon is struck by the stubborn line of his chin, the heavy silence that lingers between them. “There is tracker in your cufflinks, another in your shoe – but those are both mine. You know this.”

The smirk becomes a full-fledged grin. “I do know this,” Napoleon agrees.

“I say it again, Cowboy. What are you doing here?”

Napoleon gathers up the fingers still clutching his lapel, humming as he smooths the pad of his thumb over knuckles that have been broken one too many times, kisses the sliver of pale wrist and veins not covered by the old leather watchband. “I’m here, Peril, to cook you dinner.” Napoleon gives his fingertips one last feather-light kiss and breezes past Illya into the little kitchenette. And in the wan light, he is struck all at once by the changes in Illya. There have been glimpses, yes – brief moments in the past year – but Napoleon is shocked by just how _exhausted_ Illya looks. There are deep, purple smudges beneath his eyes. He has never been bulky, is not corded with thick muscle in the way that Napoleon is, but his clothes hang more loosely about his frame, and – _and, Illya, when was the last time you slept, or had a decent meal for that matter? You look fucking awful and you’ll be of even less use to us if you drop dead on the banks of the Seine_.

Instead, Napoleon says “tell me you have more than stale bread and a jar of peanut butter in here. I know I’m an _excellent_ cook, but even I can’t work miracles.” He nearly misses Illya’s mumbling in the process of liberating a dusty box of spaghetti noodles.

“Come again?”

“I…” Illya flushes a deep, shy red and does his best to look everywhere but at Napoleon. There is something rumpled about him, a flustered fraying about his edges. His brow is knotted and his wide slash of mouth pouts and he looks truly, shockingly young. “I have missed you, Napoleon.” Illya says his name like an afterthought.

And Napoleon goes still, leaves the spaghetti noodles on the countertop and settles his broad hands on the smooth line of Illya’s hips. “I’ve missed you too, Illyusha.” The nickname rolls off his tongue, brandy-warm and heady. “Three months without your bad humor, without having to sweep my belongings every five minutes to be sure you haven’t bugged me again, without you in my arms” he leans in close so that the words are hot and dense against Illya’s jaw. “In my bed.”

“Hm.” Illya raises one sardonic eyebrow, lets his eyes drift obviously downward. “Everything appears to still be attached, so I assume it cannot have been too much of a hardship for you – plenty of willing men and women to be seduced by the great Napoleon Solo in my absence.”

“Afraid not, Peril.” The wrinkles in Napoleon’s brow – which Illya has confessed make him look very distinguished – deepen, a smirk curling around the corners of his lips. “You’ve made an honest man of me.”

“This cannot be so” Illya says, even as he cannot quite manage to stifle his delighted, toothy grin. The old 90° angle of scar tissue at the corner of his eye crinkles. “You do not have single honest bone in your body.” And he lets Napoleon walk him backward toward the counter, stammers on the downbeat of each step “you are thief, trickster, con artist, spy…”

Napoleon crowds him against the cabinets, feels the wicked, wonderful curl of desire unfolding deep beneath his core. “Ah, Illya” he says “you say the sweetest things.” And Napoleon kisses him.

It is the last slide of the last pin into place, the roll of the tumbler, the click of the lock falling away. It’s like coming home. All of Illya’s hard edges melting away and Napoleon’s masks removed – there’s no artifice to it, none of the careful effort put into seducing a mark, putting on a show. It tastes like the Tendermint gum Illya chews and the remains of nightclub liquor and Napoleon could die right here, right now, and he would be content.

“Illya.” A kiss pressed to the corner of that dour mouth. “Illyusha.” Another kiss pressed to the pulse point behind his jaw. And Illya lets his head fall back, the light from the bare bulb smudging a shadow of eyelashes along his cheekbones. Napoleon says into the warm heat of his skin “the mission is done, Illya. Waverly is sending a plane tomorrow morning – it’s time to go home.”

Home. Illya has wondered, since his transfer to UNCLE, where is home? Is it the Russia that disowned him so easily? Is it the West that does not accept him? Napoleon’s hands untuck his shirttails, his palms skimming up Illya’s sides, re-cataloguing every dip and angle of him, and Illya knows that his home is not a place, is not governed by national borders. His home is here. Now. With Napoleon and with Gaby. And the reminder of it is visceral, swelling heady behind his breastbone, pressing up into his throat with desperate, weeping wonder.

Illya curls his spine so that he can rest his forehead in the juncture of Napoleon’s neck and shoulder. He breathes in the spice of good cologne, the warmth of Solo’s blood pulsing beneath the skin, gives a contented little hum.

Napoleon’s thumb strokes the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “It has been far too long since I’ve kissed you properly.”

“It has” Illya agrees and Napoleon would like nothing more than to drag him by his hips over to the sagging, misshapen couch, to lay Illya down and kiss every sprawling inch of him, to neck like a pair of teenagers the way they had on their first night together.

Instead, he kisses Illya’s cheek, leaves him propped up against the counter with his trousers distinctly out of sorts, and busies his wandering hands with the raw spaghetti noodles that need boiling. “Now” Napoleon proclaims over his shoulder. “Out of my kitchen. Go play one man chess.”

Illya blinks. Thunderstruck. Says “you know what, Cowboy? I take it back. I have not missed you at all.” But he slumps off to the square of carpet that denotes the living space willingly enough.

However, as much as Illya Nikovetch Kuryakin has prided himself on his impeccably styled Soviet self-control, enough time spent with Napoleon has begun to rub him raw around the edges, and the noodles have barely begun to soften and Illya is harder than ever when he shuffles back into the kitchen and plasters himself against Napoleon’s back.

“Three months” he mumbles, chin bouncing on Napoleon’s broad shoulder. “It has been three months without you. Without Gaby. I had thought, after the deaths of my mother and father, that I could live a life needing no one. Alone always, and content with that. But…” he takes a deep, shuddering breath, tightens his arms around Napoleon’s waist. “After being drafted to UNCLE now I have become… unused to solitude.”

It is the greatest concession he can give, the most he will ever say. _I love you. I do not want to be alone. You are my family, my team, my home._ And when Napoleon turns in his arms and kisses him it is all the answer he will ever need.

"Peril," Napoleon says when the kiss is broken and they are cheek-to-cheek. "You're making it very, very difficult for me to cook effectively. At this rate I'm going to burn the noodles."

"Good." Illya ducks his head, turns his nose into Napoleon's temple and the dark curls gathered there. "I do not give a damn about your noodles. You can cook later if you absolutely must. But right now, I would just like to hold."

He turns the burner off.

"Is that all?"

Illya ducks his head, and Napoleon feels deft fingers untucking his shirttails. It is a hard thing, not to grin. "Maybe not all," Illya supposes.

Napoleon does grin, then. He just can't help himself.

And in the claptrap safe-house on the edge of the Seine, Illya takes his hand and those crystal clear eyes never waver when he leads Napoleon into the little bedroom, when deft fingers are undoing buttons and peeling away turtlenecks. When Napoleon gives a little push he folds, bounces on the mattress with a _whump_ and a wicked, wide-mouthed smile and it feels like liquid gold, warm and bright behind Napoleon’s ribs.

It had been a surprise, the first time they slept together. Napoleon had kissed Illya and expected the man to fuck like he fought – brutal and bloodthirsty and no-holds-barred. Instead, Illya had held his face in those violent, trembling hands and had kissed him back so, so gently and, watching Napoleon through his eyelashes, had said something that was surely meant to be seductive but came out sounding absurdly formal and painfully awkward and so endearingly Illya that Napoleon had been lost.

They laugh between kisses. Napoleon puts his elbow into Illya’s ribs, and the bed is far too small for two grown men to be attempting such things, and it’s _perfect_. Napoleon’s gun is on the bedside table, Illya’s knife beneath the pillow, they will meet Gaby on the tarmac tomorrow morning under UNCLE’s umbrella – and Napoleon will take every precious second he is given with his lover, his team.

He has never been so happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this last summer, and I crammed as many of my personal headcanons into it as I could and it's probably a mess because of that, and I definitely intended for it to be a little more explicit in the bedroom department but I am a coward. 
> 
> Title is the song "Anthem" from the musical Chess.


End file.
